A case study approach was employed to investigate the expectations families in poverty had for their children's early childhood education program. Questions explored included the purpose of early childhood education, the needs of young children, the association of early childhood education to formal schooling, and families' aspirations for their children. Four women whose children or grandchildren were enrolled in an urban early childhood program and considered at risk because of poverty participated. Qualitative methods were used including analysis of interviews and families' photographs of representations of childhood, as well as the researcher's participant observations at the early childhood program. Results indicated that the women had mainstream aspirations for the children, including going to college. Analysis revealed that the women were insightful in regard to the development of children, to appropriate ways of learning for young children, and to the needs of young children. It was also apparent that the women understood the need for and desired a shared role between families and teachers in their children's development. The participants expect early childhood programs to not only prepare young children for school but to prepare them to successfully negotiate social interactions with both children and adults. The need for young children to be outside of the home was an unexpected theme of this research. The results also indicated that the women felt that childhood was a special time of life, free from anxiety, but a time to also form a secure base from which they could take risks in the world. The present study addresses myths that families in poverty do not understand the needs of young children, are not concerned with their futures, and have low expectations for their children. This study has implications for the preparation of teachers. Preservice teachers need opportunities for personal reflection regarding their assumptions about families. The development of initiatives that would allow low income families to reveal their expectations for their children's early childhood education is also implied. / Department of Elementary Education

Thesis (M.Sc.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, Faculty of Medicine, 1999. / Typescript. Bibliography: leaves 204-215.

This study deals with the impact of HIV/AIDS on women living in chronic poverty. The question arises: Do we focus on their HIV/AIDS stories only or do we include their other lived experiences? This phenomenological study, on two sets of three generations of women infected and affected by HIV/AIDS and living in poverty, is an attempt at understanding the way the women experience their lifeworlds, not only their HIV/AIDS stories. One set includes a grandmother, her daughter who is living with full-blown AIDS, and her granddaughter, while the other includes a grandmother, her daughter and her granddaughter infected with HIV. The initial focus of the study was on the women’s HIV/AIDS narratives. However as the study progressed, especially during the interviews, it became apparent that the women’s generational poverty or chronic poverty was of greater concern to them than the HIV/AIDS that they were experiencing. Of the six participants, only one woman centred her life story on HIV/AIDS. This finding echoes other studies on HIV/AIDS among poor women: that chronic poverty is more threatening to the women than the risk or reality of AIDS. As a phenomenological researcher my aim was to focus on the participants’ own interpretations of the studied phenomenon. However, this was inadequate in accounting for the role that social structures play in shaping and informing the women’s subjective consciousness and experience. For this reason, I used feminist ideas to understand and interpret the women’s patriarchal experiences.

The health of pregnant women is a major concern to health care providers. This grounded theory study of 40 women examined the health of pregnant women and the special threat that poverty and violence posed to their capacity for health. Pregnant women experienced their health as an integrated part of their daily lives; that is, they reported that their health was affected by 'everybody and everything." Women's main concern during pregnancy was to have a healthy newborn and, to this end, they engaged in the process of creating a healthy pregnancy by engaging in health-enhancing behaviours. In this process, the woman focused primarily on ensuring the birth of a healthy baby. Three conditions were essential to a woman's capacity to create a healthy pregnancy: (1) the acceptance of the pregnancy, (2) adequate financial resources, and (3) supportive relationships (especially having a supportive partner). Pregnancies invariably carried with them some uncertainty, and this caused the 40 women in this study to experience a state of vulnerability which, in turn, triggered attempts to create healthy pregnancies. This led to a cycle of improving health: the more energy women had to carry out health-enhancing behaviours the better they felt physically and mentally; the more able they were to conduct their daily activities; and, consequently, the better their health. However, living within a context of poverty and/or violence increased pregnant women's vulnerability and decreased their capacity for creating a healthy pregnancy, leading to extreme stress and the experience of threat. Male violence threatened the women's ability to be connected to those who were important sources of emotional, financial, task-oriented, and knowledge-oriented support, and, thus jeopardized their ability to meet their fundamental needs. Furthermore, the lack of sufficient financial resources limited women's abilities to leave their abusive partners. In order to survive, women in these circumstances sometimes reverted to previous, often harmful, ways of coping in an attempt to reduce their high levels of stress. These coping strategies usually took the form of behaviours that required little energy, such as smoking, not eating properly, and consuming alcohol. Having financial support and a safe place to go were crucial with regard to enabling women to decide to leave abusive partners. Regaining control of their lives in this way allowed women to refocus their energy on health-enhancing behaviours. The women in this study showed incredible strength as they met the challenges imposed by poverty and abuse. They did not remain victims but took hold of their lives with courage and conviction. In order to promote the adoption of health-enhancing behaviours by childbearing women, health care providers must recognize poverty and violence as factors that significantly threaten women's capacity for health. Further to this, special efforts must be made to render culturally sensitive care to First Nations women (i.e., recognizing their cultural identity and heritage, their connection to nature, and the importance of the elders of their community). To this end, we must recognize the connections between racism, colonization, poverty, and violence. For until we have eradicated poverty, and the cycle of violence and degradation that is its legacy, we will not have succeeded in doing all we can to ensure the health and well being of our citizens. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Nursing, School of / Graduate

This dissertation explored perceptions of the link between religion and the feminization of poverty amongst research participants attached to the Johane Marange Church of Seke area in Zimbabwe. The study sought to explore whether the practices in the Johane Marange church exacerbated the feminization of poverty. A qualitative research approach was selected. Data included documentary sources, notes from observation, focus group discussions and key informant interviews. It is found that according to the research participants, some of the church’s traditions may drive the feminization of poverty in the area. In particular, the church’s stance concerning young women’s participation in higher education, people’s health-seeking behaviour, its own understanding of the causes of and treatment for HIV and AIDS, its encouragement of early age at marriage for women and support of the practice of widow inheritance all contribute to a deepening feminization of poverty / Development Studies / M. A. (Development Studies)

Thesis (MA (Psychology))--University of Stellenbosch, 2006. / This study aimed to determine whether low-income women residing in a rural community in South Africa experienced any significant difference in the prevalence rates of depressive symptoms postpartum as compared to depressive symptoms prepartum. Thirty women between the ages of 16 and 38 were recruited during pregnancy from the local community clinic in Kylemore, South Africa. The women where assessed for elevated levels of depressive symptomatology using the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) during pregnancy and again at three and six months postpartum. It was found that 18 (60%) of the women reported elevated levels of depressive symptomatology during the prepartum assessment, with 11 (37.9%) and 12 (48%) women reporting elevated levels of depressive symptomatology at the three months and six month postpartum assessment respectively. It was further found that the sample from the current study did not experience any significant difference in the rate of depressive symptomatology from the prepartum assessment to either of the postpartum assessments. The results also suggests that a relationship exists between the levels of depressive symptomatology prepartum and the levels of depressive symptomatology postpartum, as those women who experienced high levels of depressive symptomatology during pregnancy continued to show high levels of depressive symptomatology at the postpartum assessments. The findings from the current study thus suggest that the classification of postpartum depression as a unique and separate entity, that differs from depression occurring in women at other times and from depression as experienced by men, may be misleading. The term suggests a depression that develops following childbirth, while in the current study it seemed that when depressive symptoms were reported postpartum, they were also already apparent during pregnancy. The findings from the current study therefore suggest that the existence of postpartum depression as a distinct diagnosis or illness is problematic – a suggestion that has frequently been suggested in the literature (Aderibigbe, Gureje, & Omigbodun, 1993; Chandran, Tharyan, Muliyil & Abraham, 2002; Cooper, Campbell, Day, Kennerly & Bond, 1988; Cox, Murray & Chapman, 1993; O’Hara, Zekoski, Phillips & Wright, 1990; Patel, Rodrigues, & DeSouza, 2002).

M.A. / Please refer to full text to view abstract

This dissertation explored perceptions of the link between religion and the feminization of poverty amongst research participants attached to the Johane Marange Church of Seke area in Zimbabwe. The study sought to explore whether the practices in the Johane Marange church exacerbated the feminization of poverty. A qualitative research approach was selected. Data included documentary sources, notes from observation, focus group discussions and key informant interviews. It is found that according to the research participants, some of the church’s traditions may drive the feminization of poverty in the area. In particular, the church’s stance concerning young women’s participation in higher education, people’s health-seeking behaviour, its own understanding of the causes of and treatment for HIV and AIDS, its encouragement of early age at marriage for women and support of the practice of widow inheritance all contribute to a deepening feminization of poverty / Development Studies / M. A. (Development Studies)

A tese ora apresentada procura discutir, a partir da análise de contratos de trabalho, artigos de jornal e, principalmente, autos produzidos no âmbito do Juízo de Órfãos da cidade de São Paulo, as condições de agenciamento e trabalho de menores de idade e suas alterações, ao longo do século XIX notadamente em sua segunda metade, diante da aproximação da abolição e seus desdobramentos. Concentrando-se nas dimensões dessas transformações estruturais vividas pelos próprios trabalhadores menores de idade e por suas mães, em grande parte mulheres sós, empobrecidas e egressas da escravidão, a tese tem o objetivo de investigar, por um lado, as formas de organização familiar e as práticas de maternidade produzidas por mulheres populares chefes de família, profundamente afetadas pela imposição de normas sociais que consagravam os parâmetros da maternidade burguesa. Confrontadas as representações inatingíveis da maternidade ideal, mulheres empobrecidas eram qualificadas como tutoras inadequadas para os próprios filhos, que, assim, eram encaminhados aos cuidados e serviços de terceiros. Esses menores, por seu turno, desde sempre haviam frequentado as fileiras dos serviços urbanos em arranjos informais de trabalho, sendo empurrados à formalização, utilizada como instrumento de controle, diante dos abalos trazidos pelo acirramento das pressões da emancipação e do pós-abolição. Entre a formalidade e a informalidade do trabalho, as experiências de exploração e violência se repetiam para esses menores, que a elas regiam procurando, como podiam, saídas para suas vidas e arranjos de trabalho melhores. Ao mesmo tempo em que fala sobre a especificidade das experiências de menores de idade e suas mães, a tese procura endereçar suas histórias a um contexto ampliado de formulação de protocolos de trabalho livre, forjados ao longo do século XIX, que, mesmo na ressaca da abolição, espelhavam formas de exploração, dominação e resistência herdadas da escravidão. / Based on the analysis of work contracts, newspaper articles and mainly judicial records produced at the Ohphans Court, this dissertation aims at discussing the conditions under which underage laborers were recruited in the city of São Paulo over the Nineteenth Century especially during its second half, when abolition and its developments approached. It focuses on the dimensions of such structural changes experienced by underage workers themselves, as well as by their mothers, mostly single, poor head-of-family women coming out of slavery. The dissertation intends to investigate the family arrangements and mothering practices adopted by such women, which were deeply impacted by the establishment of social norms enshrining the parameters of bourgeoisie motherhood. Faced with unattainable representations of the ideal maternity, impoverished women were characterized as unfit tutors to their own children, who thus were conducted to the care and services of third parties. Furthermore, the dissertation also focuses on the underage workers, who had historically been engaged in urban service provision and informal work arrangements in the city. In the face of social turmoil brought on by pressures on the advancement of emancipation and the aftermath of abolition, such workers were forced into formal service arrangements, which intended to keep them under control the of their employers or former masters. Between the worlds of labor formality and informality,) experiences of exploitation and violence were constant, and child workers acted upon them the best they could. At the same time as it discusses the specificities of the experiences lived by underage workers and their mother, however, this dissertation intends to link their histories to a broader context of elaboration of free labor protocols forged over the Nineteenth Century which, even in the dawn of abolition, mirrored forms of exploitation, domination and resistance bequeathed by slavery.

Objective: Although factors that promote initial and recurring homelessness among inner city women have been long explored, impoverished women continue enter and re-enter shelters at troubling rates. This trend is projected to increase over time. This longitudinal study uses Sydemics as a framework to advance our understanding of the relationship between depression, PTSD, trauma and intimate partner violence and the loss of housing among impoverished women using inner city Emergency Departments. We hypothesized that depression, PTSD, childhood trauma and IPV are positively associated with homelessness at baseline and that women with higher rates of a combination of these variables (e.g. PTSD and IPV) in wave 1 will have higher odds of experiencing both an initial and repeat bout of homelessness in the second and/or third waves, controlling for all other variables in the study. Method: Multivariate analyses and logistic regression, at baseline and longitudinally, were conducted to test study hypotheses with homelessness as the dependent variable. Six multivariate logistic regression models were used. Odds ratios (OR) with their 95% confidence intervals are reported. Results: Depression and childhood trauma were individually associated with homelessness at the .05 level in this sample of low income women. IPV was marginally related to homelessness (p=0.0917). PTSD however was not. Importantly, although IPV and PSTD were not individually associated with homelessness in bivariate analyses, housed, never homeless women, and women who had previously experienced homelessness had a greater odd of becoming homeless than those who experienced only one of these risk variables. Specifically, housed, never homeless women who had PTSD and IPV had a 2.2 odd of becoming homeless for the first time in waves 2 and 3, whereas those who experienced PTSD only had a 1.3 odds of becoming homeless for the first time; never homeless participants who experienced IPV only a 1.7 greater odds of becoming homeless (CI.0.348, 14.84; p=0.385), adjusting for all other variables. Similarly, the odd of becoming homeless again among participants who had PTSD and experienced IPV was 1.7 whereas the odds of recurrent homelessness was 1.2 among those who experienced PTSD only and 1.1 among those who experienced IPV only (CI.0.397, 7.46; p=0.463), controlling for all other variables in the study. Conclusion: Our findings confirm our hypotheses that low-income women who have PTSD, depression, histories of childhood trauma, and/or IPV have a higher odds of initial and recurrent homelessness when compared with women who do not have these risk variables. Our findings further confirm that women who have combinations of risk variables have even higher odds of future homelessness. Due to the low sample size of women with histories of homelessness in the study, there was lack of power. Despite this challenge, the results of these explorations (in determining heretofore unidentified effect sizes) utilizing Syndemics as a conceptual framework are promising. Future research with larger sample sizes (and sufficient power) are important to further the initial findings from this study.